I didn’t manage to do a day 1 review of this card, since Nvidia once again held the drivers back until the official public launch of the card, like they don’t want for this card to be heard about, I’ve noticed also that there’s a small number of reviews upon release, which is a bit odd since it’s going to have to fight with AMD’s budget offering, RX 5500. Nevertheless, now that I finally have drivers on hand and a sample from MSI, their GTX 1650 Super Gaming X model, it’s time to check out what this little thing can actually do.
But, before I continue talking about the performance of this card, let’s see what’s actually different about this series compared to its non-Super brother and another surrounding, similarly priced and performing models from Nvidia’s portfolio. Unlike with the GTX 1660 and GTX 1660 Super situation, the GTX 1650 Super not only that it brings faster GDDR6 video memory in relation to the regular GTX 1650 which has GDDR5 video memory, but it also has a bit above 40% more CUDA cores, 1280 vs 896, more texture units also, while the number of ROP’s stayed the same.
Compared to the next stronger model in their line-up above it, the GTX 1660, it has 128 CUDA cores and 8 texture units more over the GTX 1650 Super, while the number of ROP’s is much larger – exactly 50%. With the GTX 1650 Super we get a bit higher GPU clock speed compared to the GTX 1650, while although it gets that faster GDDR6 video memory, it does retain the same video memory size of 4 GB’s and very modest 128-bit memory bus. This proved to be crucial in terms of gaming at the 1440p resolution, while for 1080p, as you will see later on, ends up to be its sweet spot.
Be sure to subscribe to my channel, because I’m also going to do a comparison with the regular GTX 1650, which I’ve also reviewed a couple of months ago, and its predecessor by price – the GTX 1050 Ti, as well as for the future reviews of GTX 1650 Super and other cards from different vendors, and if you need a reference point for the next card above it, feel free to check my review of MSI GTX 1660 Gaming X model in the right top corner of this video.
MSI GTX 1650 Super Gaming X again uses working formula
If you came across on basically any of Nvidia’s latest generation graphics card reviews from MSI, especially anything from their Gaming series sub-brand, you’ll notice that the MSI GTX 1650 Super Gaming X isn’t any different from them design-wise. We have that very recognizable looking black and gray shroud fitted on a dual-slot design, which looks to be very color neutral and will go along with basically any build. I personally like it, although it’s not that unique or extra looking.
As it represents a more budget-oriented graphics card series, taming its price as much as possible is always preferable, which is why MSI decided to partially cut down the RGB LED-lit logo on the side of the card, which is now not RGB, but it only lights up in white, while you can still control the glowing effects thought MSI’s Dragon Center software utility, so you’re still left with some features. Another attempt to save a bit more continues on when you move to the back, where it right away feels a bit strange to see an MSI’s Gaming series model coming without a back-plate, just a clean black PCB, with a white MSI dragon logo on it, but again, since this series is on the other end of the food chain so to speak, it’s no wonder that we’re missing this more to say commodity rather than a feature.
Behind that shroud you’ll find, for this GPU, a pretty decent cooling setup, with a total of three heat pipes running through the aluminum fin stack, cooling of the GPU with a plate attached directly to them and it, while the video memory has a cold plate on it, onto which is blown the cold air from two 85mm Torx 3.0 fans, but they are not n direct contact with the heatsink, while the 3-phase GPU power design is also covered with a part cold plate and it’s used for cooling its VRM components, but it is in contact with the fin stack array above it, thanks to the pretty thick thermal pads. To be honest, it doesn’t need anything stronger than this, it’s a 100W TDP GPU after all, which is easily confirmed just by taking a look at the load temperatures. On an open testbed it was running at barely 60°C, no matter what you did to it, even my overclocking of it raised the temperature by just a degree or two at best, with just a slight increase of the fan speeds, while the stock idle GPU temperature was just a bit above 40°C, and that’s with the fans being completely off, since they have MSI’s Zero Frozr feature.
Speaking of that, this little thing has a pretty high overclocking potential, which is a slight change of scenery for me so to speak, since lately I’ve been doing a lot of reviews of AMD’s Navi 10 series, and with those you won’t get too far with pulling the slider away from its stock position in MSI’s Afterburner. I manage to bring up up the GPU core clock frequency by roughly about 150 MHz, which translated in about 150-200 MHz of in-game frequency bump, I was seeing anywhere from 2000 to 2070 MHz, instead of the regular 1850 – 1920 MHz load frequency speed span, while the video memory frequency was overclocked from 1500 MHz to a bit above 1820 MHz.
Feel free to use my MSI Afterburner settings for overclocking of this card, and if it’s not stable for you, just try to lower down GPU or memory speed step by step and test it out until you get stable cards behavior and results.
GTX 1650 Super Gaming X – 1080p sweetspot
The card only needs one extra 6-pin PCI-express power connector for powering it up, and some of you are probably wondering or hoping to see a version of this graphics card series without any of it, but I don’t think we’ll see a GTX 1650 Super model without at least one extra 6-pin PCI-express power connector, since its TDP, although low as I mentioned earlier, is around 100W, so the power consumption is also roughly in that realm, and powering it over the PCI-express lane solely is just not enough. I’ve actually managed to record around 130W of power consumption difference between idle and load under worst-case scenario load, that being the Furmark GPU stress test, plus if you count in the few watts which are pulled in idle, that makes it a bit above that figure, and this kind of power draw is something which needs that extra power from the additional PCI-express power connector next to what can the PCI-express slot provide.
Before I get to the benchmarking results, if you have any question or other concerns about this card, feel free to leave your comment down below, and down there, in the description box to be precise, you can also find my setup which I used for testing this GPU out, but the core components are Intel’s six-core Core i5 – 8600K CPU overclocked to 5,1 GHz and paired with 2 x 8GB of 3000 MHz DDR4 RAM.
Finally, taking a look at the performance, although I also did my benchmarking runs at 1440p, the focus should be on 1080p, and here the GTX 1650 Super series feels the best. You can expect smooth gaming with high frame-rate output, so high it could probably carry a high-refresh-rate 1080p gaming monitor in some of the more popular and better-optimized titles. It’s definitely stronger than the RX 570 and it seems like it will also trade blows with the RX 580. 1440p is a bit tricky on a count of the video memory size, but it’s still playable and you could definitely get a few frames more out of it with lowering down the graphics settings.
GTX 1650 Super – The new value king
As for the extra performance that I got with overclocking this particular sample, I was seeing roughly around 10-15% more compared to stock figures, which is a pretty decent bump considering that it comes free of charge, it will only take away a few minutes of your time.
One thing that the Gaming series is known for as long as it exists, is that the noise that it makes when the card is under load is rarely noticeable, on a count of a good cooler and fan design combination, which is once again confirmed with this model. The fans speed was roaming around 850-900 RPM under stock load, while under OC it pretty much stayed the same, more on the upper end of the 900 RPM mark, but bottom line, basically unnoticeable even when the card sitting a meter away from me on an open test rig. Here’s a short sound clip of the card under stock and OC load, while also showing the sound meter for measurement comparison.
Although most of us brushed off the GTX 1650 series as something not worth of your money taking into consider its price point and performance output that it brings to the table, with the GTX 1650 Super series that’s a completely different story. Comparing both their MSRP launch prices, for basically a slight price bump of just few dollars more you will get a much competent 1080p gaming workhorse compared to its brother, which makes it a no-brainer for those who are on the budget, at least s of now and while we wait and see what AMD prepared for us with the upcoming RX 5500 series.
That’s it for this time, I hope this MSI GTX 1650 Super Gaming X Review will let you decided a bit easier which graphics card model to buy, if you have any question feel free to hit me in the comments section of my YouTube video listed above, you can contact me via my social media channels!
